SEO for WordPress Posts: A Short Tutorial

Everyone wants better Search Engine Optimization (or SEO for short) on their pages of their websites.

When your webpage is optimized for search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc., you will improve your chances of ranking higher. Your placement in the results will be closer to the first page, possibly attracting more traffic to your website.

You can do a few simple things to help with better rankings. Here are a few points to keep in mind when you are writing a post. You will want to include these for maximum SEO purposes:

Title: The length of the title should be about 4-8 words. 60-70 characters is a good measure for the max # of characters.

Post Types: Many people are scanners – the like to see bulleted lists and Headlines in your post. use the H1, H2, H3 tags to help readers read! Use bullet points/numbered lists to help your readers, um, read some more!

Short & Sweet: Beleive it not, people do NOT usually like to read long paragraphs (that is why the bulletted posts work so well!) Keep your message short and sweet!

Permalink: Make sure that your Permalink (the page address/URL) is keyword-rich and does not include superfluous words. Don’t want to do this? You can change the ‘Slug’ on the post page!

Always Use a Picture: You should always include at least 1 image per post. Use an image that will catch people’s eye! And don’t steal an image you find online – make sure you have proper permission to use an image!

Use Keywords Just Right: Use your keyword(s) in the first and last sentences to bump up the on-page SEO.

Crosslink pages on your site: Include a link to another page on your site in each post. Also, link from another page to the new page. This will help reduce your ‘Bounce rate.’ When people leave your site after visiting just one page, your SEO score can decrease. However, if they go to page after page after page, your score will go up! Check out a plugin like, Contextual Related Posts to have this done automatically.